Alfred Russel Wallace 



always wished to hear an independent judgment about the 

 Kajah Brooke, and now I have been delighted with your 

 splendid eulogium on him. 



With respect to the fewness and inconspicuousness of 

 the flowers in the tropics, may it not be accounted for by 

 the hosts of insects, so that there is no need for the 

 flowers to be conspicuous ? As, according to Humboldt, 

 fewer plants are social in the tropical than in the tem- 

 perate regions, the flowers in the former would not make 

 so great a show. 



In your note you speak of observing some inelegancies 

 of style. I notice none. All is as clear as daylight. I 

 have detected two or three errata. 



In Vol. I. you write londiacus : is this not an error ? 



Vol. II., p. 236 : for western side of Aru read eastern. 



Page 315 : Do you not mean the horns of the moose ? 

 For the elk has not palmated horns. 



I have only one criticism of a general nature, and I am 

 not sure that other geologists would agree with me : you 

 repeatedly speak as if the pouring out of lava, etc., from 

 volcanoes actually caused the subsidence of an adjoining 

 area. I quite agree that areas undergoing opposite move- 

 ments are somehow connected ; but volcanic outbursts must, 

 I think, be looked at as mere accidents in the swelling up 

 of a great dome or surface of plutonic rocks; and there 

 seems no more reason to conclude that such swelling or 

 elevation in mass is the cause of the subsidence than that 

 the subsidence is the cause of the elevation; which latter 

 view is indeed held by some geologists. I have regretted 

 to find so little about the habits of the many animals 

 which you have seen. 



In Vol. II., p. 399, I wish I could see the connection 

 between variations having been first or long ago selected, 

 and their appearance at an earlier age in birds of paradise 



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